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Spoiled Daisies
70 reasons to watch two Maries
By Chris Eng
August 2003
Daisies was made in 1966. It was directed by Vera Chytilová. It is from the former Czechoslovakia. It was part of the Czech New Wave. This means it is an art film. But you don’t watch art films. Art films are for egg-heads and poindexters. Still, you’ll like this one. Here’s why:
1) The film starts with explosions.
2) Lots of explosions.
3) Tons of random, wartime explosions running through the opening credits.
4) Then it cuts to two girls in swimsuits.
5) One of them is picking her nose.
6) Their names are Marie and Marie.
7) The think the world is spoiled.
8) They decide to be spoiled, too.
9) Really spoiled.
10) So they get old men to take them out to lunch so they can pig out.
11) They eat a lot.
12) They shamelessly cram cake into their pie-holes.
13) They see off their sugar daddies at the train platform after their lunches.
14) At one point, one of the Maries gets on the train with the old man du jour.
15) Then she ditches him.
16) And we jump into trippy multi-chromatic, time lapse train-shots, but just when you think it might descend into irrevocable artiness…
17) It cuts away.
18) And they go to a club where there’s flapper-dancing going on.
19) The Maries drink and smoke.
20) And act obnoxious.
21) And get up on the table.
22) And steal other people’s booze.
23) And get totally fucking loaded.
24) And get their asses tossed out.
25) Did I mention them stealing booze?
26) They also steal money.
27) And corn.
28) Did I mention they wear swimsuits?
29) They also wear lingerie.
30) And take off their lingerie.
31) And wear towels.
32) And get in the bath.
33) And talk existentially in the bath.
34) They set toilet paper on fire, even though it’s hanging around their room.
35) They ignore beaux on the phone who profess their love to them.
36) They pig out while beaux on the phone profess their love for them.
37) They symbolically castrate the beaux on the phone by doing rude things to suggestive foods.
38) They give out different names to every guy they meet.
39) They spin.
40) They dance.
41) They dance around with barstools on their heads.
42) One of the Maries has an insane chipmunk laugh, like Alvin.
43) Or maybe Theodore.
44) They pose important questions about human relationships, delving into the very core of why we love.
45) Then they forget about them.
46) They live according to the maxim that one should try anything once.
47) Then they roll down a hill.
48) They explore causal relationships in the simplest of places, à la Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
49) Then they cut each others’ clothes.
50) And Tim Burton-esque decapitations are effected.
51) They hide in dumbwaiters.
52) And ride them past butchers and orchestras.
53) They engage in the graphic despoiling of an entire banquet.
54) They engage in the graphic despoiling of an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.
55) They make sex sounds.
56) And have food fights.
57) And get cake on their boobs.
58) And dance on the food.
59) And strip on the food.
60) To surf rock.
61) They hang from a chandelier.
62) And crawl into the chandelier.
63) And swing from the chandelier.
64) They re-set the table with broken plates.
65) And dirty cutlery.
66) And garbage food.
67) And top things off with dramatic deaths.
68) And explosions.
69) They do all of this stuff because the film is a multi-layered metaphor about our society and the inherent need to destroy that is lodged in the heart of every human being; it explores the places that acquiescing to the smallest of those urges will take you and whether it’s truly possible for someone to be rehabilitated once their soul, like the landscape and our world, has been similarly destroyed.
70) It’s also hella funny.
(This article originally appeared in Terminal City.) |
